Friday, February 10, 2012

The Basics of Pinterest

Have you heard about Pinterest? The Pinterest site explains that Pinterest "lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes". I think of Pinterest as my personal magazine. It gives me a space to create storyboards reflecting my personal interests, favorite things, places of interest and things I want to remember. If you connect with me on Pinterest you'll be able to see my boards. As I write this I have twenty two boards in various stages of development.

At first I wasn't sure I would like Pinterest. I didn't really get the point. Then I figured out one good way to use Pinterest would be as a substitute for bookmarking Internet pages in my browser. I have many, many pages bookmarked that I want to remember or refer back to. Instead of bookmarking a page, with Pinterest you "Pin It" using the Pin It button. Pinning pages allows me to organize like pages into themes and have a visual reference when I am looking for something. This seems to work really well for me.

Pinterest has the added feature of allowing you to follow others and lets others follow you. Like Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest encourages you to create a community. When you pin something to one of your boards, that pin becomes visible to others who are following you. That makes Pinterest a great way to share your favorite content with others. When I log in to Pinterest I can see the recent pins from the other pinners that I follow. Below is a portion of a recent login page on Pinterest.

By hovering over any pin on the page I have three action options: Repin, Like, or Comment. You'll see how these options appear by looking at the top of the picture below. These options give me a quick way to repin the pin to one of my boards, add the pin to my "Likes" or add a comment to the pin.

By clicking on the picture I am taken to the pinner's board and a larger view of the pin. I can go to the original post from there by clicking the link in the upper right corner of the pin. Below you can see Lisa's original pin of the melting snowman cookie and on the left there is a picture of her GRANDkid cuisine board.

From here I can go to the original cookie post at Crazy Domestic by clicking the link where it says "From crazydomestic.com". I can also decided to repin it to one of my boards, like it or comment on the pin from here. If I want to check out the other pins in Lisa's GRANDkids cuisine board I can do so by clicking on any of the pictures at the left of the page.

Doesn't this sound like fun? I warn you, it can become addictive. I find visiting Pinterest is a lot like flipping through the pages of a magazine, never really knowing what you might find of interest. Do you want to give Pinterest a try? Pinterest is a site you can join only by invitation. If you would like me to send you an invitation to join the Pinterest community just send me a request by email at donna@justonedonna.com.

Sometimes you'll find the Pin It button on a site. Here at Just One Donna I have added it just below the title of the blog post. Having the Pin It bookmarklet on your toolbar makes it easy to pin from pages that don't have the button.

There you have it. These are the basics to get you started on Pinterest. If you have other questions once you have joined Pinterest be sure to check out the Pinterest Help page. I hope to see you on Pinterest soon.

Hi, Julie. I certainly know what you mean about time. Pinterest is a site you can dabble in and use as much pr as little as you wish. An added bonus is that it will drive traffic to your blog. You should check it out.

I see Pinterest posted a lot on Twitter and I had no idea what it was. First of all, the name..... I always think it says "pine rest", "pin test", even if it's spelled correctly, how the heck do you pronounce it? Anyway.... I'm glad you like it, but it does seem rather time consuming to me.

Allie, if you want to try it out, just let me know. I'd be happy to send an invite your way. There is no real commitment once you join. The amount of time you spend there is totally up to you. It is fun. I'm enjoying it.

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